How has examining victim mentality changed or challenged your thinking? Exposing the lies and combating them with the truth will help us to live a life that’s healthy and full of meaning. Victim mentality is one way we can rob ourselves of that better life.
And while we’ve probably all “played the victim” card – more than a few times – it can be really tough to see when we’re being a bully. Now, you may be thinking, but I’m a nice person, I’d never hurt a fly… Well, let’s walk through this a bit.
Everyone goes through seasons in life when insecurities drive them to make poor choices, lean into others, or even push them around. We’ve all been there, especially when we lose our sense of worth or we wrestle with unhealthy behavior patterns.
Think about it. No one is immune to the weights, wounds, and disappointments of life.
- Have you ever put pressure on someone else to get your own way?
- Have you ever used emotions, words, or actions to get others to conform?
- Have you ever uncovered someone else’s weaknesses in order to hide your own?
I’ve said this before, without examining our lives, thoughts, and actions, our tendency is to get stuck in harmful and distorted thinking patterns. Without even realizing it, we might even be harming others to get what we want or what we think we need.
Today, we expose the other side of Victimhood by looking at the lies that Villains tell themselves.
Don’t be afraid to uncover the truth, look at yourself in the mirror, and take the necessary steps to change for the better. Your life – that better life you’ve always wanted – is waiting for you.
And, I can tell you that your relationships with others will benefit as well!
Enjoy today’s episode
497 | Lies Villains Tell Themselves
Chris LoCurto 0:00
Continuing with the series on examining our lives to find the lies that we tell ourselves, that is coming up next.
Chris LoCurto 0:18
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto´s show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Some of you may be familiar with this quote, I say it often from not often but from time to time, and some people have no clue what I'm saying. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this out there and see if you are familiar with this quote from Gosh, what is now an old film. So here you go. Since you're new here, I'm gonna cut you a break today. So why don't you make like a tree and get out of here. Now. There you go. That's my best Biff Tanner. impersonation from the 1985 Back to the Future. Some of you are like, I don't know if I've ever heard of that film before. And some of you are with me, you remember that line? That was a fun scene. And it was a funny scene for at least a couple of reasons. Firstly, Marty's nemesis, Biff Tanner are 10. And I should say not 10 or 10 and gets the line wrong. Obviously the line is make like a tree and leaf. And he later finds out in the future, I think back to the future to that what the actual line is. But also it completely undermines the aggression that Biff is showing Marty when he's welcoming the new kid to the school. Right? So it's classic 1980s Bullying humor at its cinematic finest. For those of us who grew up in the 80s not sure how that would go over in today's climate. But the question behind the question is what's really going on inside Biff? In that moment, right. In today's episode, part of a series of looking at the lives of victims and villains tell themselves, the point is for us to face the wounds and weaknesses we all have inside of us. So here's the deal, without examining our lives, thoughts, actions, everything, and we tend to get stuck in harmful and most likely distorted thinking patterns.
So when we come back, gaining perspective and getting power over the lies, of villain mentality. Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication, to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life. It all starts with having great communication, the best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style, and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home, the best way to do that is to go to Chris accredo.com/store. And get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team to day get it for your family members. Today. As you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate go to Chris accredo.com/store today. In the episodes on victim mentality, we talked about how it has become socially acceptable, socially trendy, even praiseworthy, to boast about your victimhood. It is just beyond ridiculous. And it's not something that just don't get it don't get why so many people are in love with it infatuated with it, you'd think it would be the opposite when it comes to being a bully. And, you know, we see a whole lot of people complaining about bullying in school, but really, it's not. It's not the opposite, or at least it depends on who your audience is. I should say it that way. I mean, after all, it's a normal stress or panic reaction to go into fight or flight mode, right? The attack mechanism can get triggered pretty easily nowadays, and it's becoming just as fashionable and even justifiable to lash out in anger when provoked. It is amazing to me. It is amazing to me to see the people who are complaining about bullying, being people who bully. It will never just, you know, make sense to me how somebody can feel like it's okay for them to do it. You know, the double standard. They can bully the living daylights out of somebody.
But my gosh, it also needs to be the very thing that they complain about because it's so horrendous. And so horrible, right? So again, we've got to dig down underneath the surface to see what's really going on. So if we leave this part of our lives unexamined, we'll end up with a life that's lacking real meaning. And that is not where we want to be. So we've all struggled with untrue recorded memos in our heads and often set the loop and repeat about ourselves about other people about our potential, our problems, circumstances, weaknesses, failures, etc. Right. But rehearsing a lie over and over again, doesn't make it true, as I shared this two podcasts ago, it just gives it more power over you and stuck on repeat lies get embedded in our thinking, they become part of our inner dialogue, and even our, this is a scary part character. So make sure if you've not gone back to check out episode 47 on why character counts for more perspective, and make sure that you go and do that. So these untrue memos, they get stuck as negative self talk, they get stuck in our mind, and, and they typically crop up in a couple of ways, encouraging us to act out either as victims, or as villains, or possibly even both. So we could say that biFs characters exhibiting a surface level response of bullying, these micro aggressions are, are likely the result and I don't know if biFs aggression was micro, but, you know, micro aggressions can result be the result of insecurities, coping mechanisms, inner conflicts, definitely lack of self worth. And that's actually why this character is so relatable now, I can tell you, as somebody who is a, you know, again, a very high s and somebody who grew up being a very submissive, and, you know, dealing with controlling people all throughout my life, when I look at this character, in the movie when I was a kid, I mean, I just, it was not something that I could relate to, as far as being a Biff, but instead something that I despised as being a real mean controlling jerk, right? However, as life goes on, and we experience things in life, and we grow in life, I think everybody could get to a place as they get older of recognizing, everybody has an internal Biff, right? Everybody has a, a period where insecurities might drive you to bad decision making or anger or frustration or struggles in life.
For some people, they've got it from an early early age. For some people, it's it's a struggle from early on. Our goal today is not to point out people and just talk about how bad it is to be a Biff. But instead, what do we do with it? How do we dig underneath and find out so here's, here's a larger than life character of the bully that we've all played at one time or another, you may never have responded that much. But you've probably had a moment where you've acted out in a frustration or in an anger way. We've all probably told ourselves similar lines to what biFs dealing with, I'll, I'll never be good enough. I'll never be accepted or appreciated. Nobody likes me. So I've got to appear strong, right? I mean, we look at the movie, and we think Biff doesn't have any problems in life. And he's just being a jerk, because he's choosing to be a jerk. But what do we know? There's a whole lot of insecurity going on. And yes, I am using a fictional character. But it applies to all of us as humans as well. Either way, I think you get the point. The key is to recognize and deal with these lies, so that they don't ruin our lives, or the lives of others. You know, in the case of bullies, in speaking of lies that hold us back from experiencing the life and business that you really want in life. That's what this podcast is all about. So let me pause and mention that we are coming up on our 500th episode. Thank you, to you, the 500th episode of the Chris Lucado show, and that's super exciting for us. And it's been over nine years of helping people to get unstuck in life and business to create greater relationship to create greater lives to create greater businesses, you know, to celebrate the fact that we keep growing and we keep helping people and we keep seeing them embrace the life of, of leadership that they really want, or relationships that they really want. We're giving free stuff away. Yep, that is right. For the month of November, you can go to Chris liccardo.com/ 500 500 and answer a few questions that will help us bring you even more amazing content, and sign up for your chance to win some really great prizes. So go to Crystal crystal.com/ 500 today and sign up and let me just say, and we'll talk more about this on the 500th episode, but it means the world to us. that you guys have made this possible. So we love that you're with us. And we love that we get to do this and help bring information that's hopefully helping to change your life. Okay, now back to villains.
Chris LoCurto 10:15
What if we're in transition right there. So while we're gonna add a little bit of a spice to the mix and give our villains a little contrast so that they're easier to spot, so we're gonna have to discuss heroes as well. So it's hard to imagine one without the other right? And the contrast will help us understand both now I don't know if the Marty McFly character played by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future was a hero. Exactly. But he certainly did some hero like things in the movie, you never thought you were going to hear me use Back to the Future to explain villains Did you? So villains and heroes. So some things he did. He overcame obstacles he learned to care about others, he stood up to some bullies, he saved his family's timeline. He taught others to be brave, he rescued a woman in distress, which would be his mom, fun, funky situations and that one there, he becomes a relatively better human, and he leaves things better than he found them. So here's the question. Is it possible for us to aspire to be the same as Marty McFly, you may not want his name.
You may not have even won his $10 Haircut as he talks about. But is it possible for us to aspire to do the hero type stuff that he experienced in the movie? Well, as we get deeper into all of this, I do want to point something out. That's very important. When we talk about villains, and we try to unravel what's really going on inside of them, I don't want you to think that we are excusing their behavior. So this is super important for you to hear. Don't hear that we're justifying villain behavior. That is absolutely not what we're saying. It's never okay to to bullying, abuse others, as somebody who has seen a lot of bullying and abuse in people's lives and experienced it in my own as well. I can tell you, that is never okay. There's no justification for that. So does that even have to be said? I don't know. It's a really good reminder. On the other hand, let's not pretend that we all haven't at some point tried to manipulator or to force or to put pressure on others to get our own way to get what we want it right. So it doesn't mean that we've all been abusive, or we've all been, you know, super bullies and, you know, beat people up and all that kind of stuff. Even if you just manipulated somebody to get your own way. Sometimes that's a form of bullying in the process. So we all have done it. But there's a way out and it starts first with recognizing the unhealthy behavior, right? That's the most important part. If we can't recognize the unhealthy behavior, then none of it really matters. So let me underline this statement from the previous episode. Self awareness is self awareness is the ability to observe yourself objectively, and determine how your thoughts, actions and emotions do or do not align with your internal standards.
So maybe your aggressions aren't so exaggerated, like in the life of Biff Tannen, maybe yours are more microaggressions. Maybe they're more really super passive. Maybe they're masked or veiled comments, maybe they're hidden by sarcasm or teasing, maybe they're revealed by nonverbal gesturing. Doesn't matter. If it's there, it's there. Maybe it's a little bit tougher to see than somebody coming up and being physically abusive to somebody else. But if the microaggressions are there, the character traits are there, then it's something we need to dig in and find out. But if we're being honest, we've all experienced at some point in our life, us pushing on somebody or pushing on others, to get our own way to get something that we want to be dominant, to be less afraid, or even to mask or not deal with our own real feelings. Right? Many times. We see somebody who responds out of anger, frustration, manipulation, because they're not wanting to deal with the very thing that they're struggling with inside. Now, how many times have you experienced that yourself? And listen, this isn't a show on judgment. We're not judging people here, right. That's not our purpose. That's not our focus.
The goal is for us to recognize so that we can make changes. If we need to dig a bit into our root system of our hearts. What do we discover? What do we find? You know, what's going on inside of us? What's what's our Are heart really after right? What is it that we're really longing for? So here's a secret. Well, it's not going to be secret at 30 villains are really victims who've learned to turn their fear, anger and insecurity outward. Think about it. There is no bully who just chooses to be a bully, because they like being a bully. Now, some people believe that there are many bullies because they just like bullying people. But what's the purpose of bullying? Why do I need to bully somebody if I'm a bully? Because I'm insecure, because I'm struggling with my own inefficiencies, my own self worth, lack of self worth my own struggles, that my own lies in my head, right? Whatever it is, I'm struggling with those things. So let that sink in for a second. When you do look at a bully. Really, they're struggling with insecurity.
They're just responding in a less acceptable crappy way. Right. The funny thing is today, we praise victimhood. And we don't realize that victim mentality is nothing but insecurity. It's the response of insecurity. But what happens when somebody is a villain? If it's on social media, it's becomes very acceptable, right? But if you're the one being bullied, then it's not acceptable at all right? So their aggression is largely self protection, self-protection. Crazy to think about it, but that's what they're doing. It can also be a way of mimicking what they've seen, or had done to them in the past. So villains are often drowning in their own self suffering, right? Just like victims are as well. There's an old saying, hurt people hurt people, right? However, this does not excuse the behavior, it does not excuse the behavior, it only helps to explain the reason why it exists. And if we're ever going to solve stuff, we can't just see a behavior and call the behavior bad. We have to understand why the behavior exists in the first place. For all of those people that are pushing for no bullying at school, I can help you solve this very quickly. If you have a bully in elementary school, it's because they're being bullied at home. That person who's trying to rip control from other people is having control ripped from their lives as well. If you see a young bully, I can promise you there's an old bullet older bully in that bullies life.
All right. So just calling somebody bullying, saying that the behavior is not acceptable is not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. We need to help them to understand why they're bullying. Without self examination, without owning and accepting our own faults and failures, we're never going to grow out of being the villain and into the the hero that we're cultivating both for ourselves, as well as for others as well. So, folks, this is all the time that we have for today. This is part one on lies villains tell themselves. So next week, we're going to hit part two and continue to examine ourselves and discovered the lies that we tell ourselves. Hopefully this has helped you today. Take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
